Social Movements

Neil Lund

2024-09-17

What is a social movement?

What is a social movement (according to Charles Tilly)

Three features:

1) a sustained, organized public effort making collective claims on target authorities, in short a campaign;

2) employment of combinations of the following forms of political action, the creation of associations, public meetings, vigils, rallies, demonstrations, petition drives, statements to and in public media and pamphleteering;

3) public representations of WUNC: worthiness, unity, numbers, and commitment

What precedes social movements?

What precedes social movements?

Examples

  • Food riots and grain seizures

  • Invasions and organized poaching

  • Destruction of gates, machinery

  • Rough music/Chivaree

  • Forced illumination

  • Mock trials

Features:

  • Emulating or co-opting authority: mock trials and effigies

  • Appeals to mediating authorities: guilds, churches, village leaders make claims not classes or identity groups

  • Celebrations and clubs as cover: parades and festivals lend plausible deniability to contention

  • Localized and direct: if you don’t like the loom, you smash it.

  • Parochial: mostly specific to a particular culture.

What early movements looked like

On the 16th August I went to Stockport Road about eleven or a little after, and I met a great number of persons advancing toward Manchester with all the regularity of a regiment, only they had no uniform. They were all marching in file, three abreast. They had two banners with them. There were persons by the side, acting as officers and regulating the files. The order was beautiful indeed. - Francis Phillips (Manchester Merchant; 1819)

What early movements looked like

Belgium 1800-1900

(from: Tilly, Charles, and Lesley J. Wood. Social Movements, 1768-2012. Routledge, 2015.)
Decade Meetings Demonstrations Petitions
1830s 4 2 7
1840s 0 1 3
1850s 2 0 0
1860s 1 3 0
1870s 1 11 0
1880s 0 59 0
1890s 2 57 0

What explains the shift?

Sources of repertoire change in England and America

  • War (Seven Years war and American Revolution)

  • Parliamentarization (some powers go from monarch to elected representatives)

  • Capitalization (emergence of a new kind of wealth)

  • Proletarianization (peasants become wage workers)

WUNC Displays

“We are many, we are worthy and unjustly disadvantaged, we agree among ourselves, we are committed, disciplined and legal.” - Tilly 1994

  • WUNC displays are a defining feature of social movements

  • They operate by generating sympathy/support from other members of the public, rather than through direct actions. Symbolism is central.

Worthiness

Neat clothing, calm demeanor, emphasis on respectability or social status (mothers, clergy, soldiers)

Mothers of the Plaza De Mayo protest in Argentina

Unity

Uniform clothing or banners, coordinated chants or songs

Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement protest

Numbers

Large crowd sizes, petitions with lots of signatures, social media activity

Women’s March (and Trump inauguration crowd)

Commitment

Lunch counter sit in at Woolworth’s in Mississippi

Diversity(?)

Movements often act to encourage the perception of diversity, and this plays a role in generating public support

Bailey, Erica R., et al. “How Tilly’s WUNC works: Bystander evaluations of social movement signals lead to mobilization.” American Journal of Sociology 128.4 (2023): 1206-1262.

Bailey, Erica R., et al. “How Tilly’s WUNC works: Bystander evaluations of social movement signals lead to mobilization.” American Journal of Sociology 128.4 (2023): 1206-1262.

Changing the repertoire

  • Social movements have been a consistent feature of contentious politics hundreds of years, but they’re not necessarily a permanent one.

  • Certain behaviors can leave the contentious repertoire through the same means that they enter it. Or take on a different cast as they become more routine or viewed as more extreme.